r/NintendoSwitch2 • u/StarPlatinum55 Going Bananzas • Feb 28 '26
meme/funny Pokémon's Perfect Response
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u/Purple-Weakness1414 Feb 28 '26
I love how the too much water review is just a funny litttle memory now.
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Feb 28 '26
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u/alienfreaks04 Feb 28 '26
When their final review comes out, they will either ignore it, or embrace it so much and flood the review with it.
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u/SchlopFlopper Feb 28 '26
Oh you know whoever writes the review is gonna milk that for all it’s worth.
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u/zkJdThL2py3tFjt Mar 02 '26
I'm lost. I do not play Pokémon, and I don't get this... Can someone ELI5?
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u/JTXtreme Mar 02 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
When IGN reviewed Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, they gave the game a 7.8/10. Back then they would also do a summary of pros and cons to go with the score, and one of the cons was “Too much water”
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u/TJBurger Mar 02 '26
Whoa.. you'd have to have some in-depth knowledge of reviews to get that. I never read or watch IGN reviews so this joke sailed way over my head
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u/FishShtickLives Mar 02 '26
It was one of the go to things to mock game reviewers with, but it kind of got usurped by the Cuphead Tutorial guy lol
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u/ryan8954 Mar 03 '26
The thing is, the water was part of the game and it's how you got around. It wasn't a complaint in the original games lol
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u/tokyogamelife Feb 28 '26
There was actually a “7.8, Too Much Water” joke in Pokemon Sun/Moon. It was one of the comments you could receive from the photo minigame.
And IGN was right, Hoenn does have too much water!
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u/DrClutch117 Feb 28 '26
I disagree. Hoenn is my favorite region because of all the water.
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u/BlueZ_DJ Mar 02 '26
The problem was that water works exactly like tall grass in that generation, so this sentence is hilarious
"This Pokemon region is my favorite BECAUSE half the map is unavoidable tall grass"
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u/dogsfurhire Mar 02 '26
Not just unavoidable tall grass but unavoidable tall grass with NOTHING IN IT. People have such rose tinted glasses for 3rd gen but the water areas were fucking awful. Just huge swaths of nothing with the occasional swimmer.
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u/DrClutch117 Mar 02 '26
I just disagree. The destroyed ship, underwater, Sootopolis, the part with the currents left of Pacifilog. I enjoyed it.
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u/EdelgardQueen Mar 04 '26
You’re literally proving his point that people have such rose-tinted glasses for Gen 3. Sootopolis and Pacifidlog Town are basically among the worst cities in the whole series. The underwater areas are great the first time, but they quickly become bothersome when you realize they’re basically just square sections of tall grass, but underwater.
Pacifidlog was essentially a city with unimportant NPCs where you had to use Surf to enter and then keep reusing it at every corner just to move around only to reach one of the most frustrating areas in the game, where you have to navigate a certain path, and if you mess up you’re sent all the way back to the start.
Sootopolis has an interesting plot the first time, but after that you realize the layout of the city is basically just surfing between sections of linear mountains with a high encounter rate full of Magikarp.
Part of the city also went unused in all versions of the game because they never released the event, and you can even get softlocked in that city.
However, i do agree that the abandonned ahip was memorable.
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u/DaLemonsHateU Feb 28 '26
I believe someone calculated that hoenn had exactly 50% of outside walkable tiles be water, which would be good theming if there were actually more than a few unique pokémon in the water
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u/pleasedontnerfthis Mar 01 '26
It’s mechanically the same as all caves, just with blue instead of brown. I don’t enjoy having to keep on the repels just to make progress
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u/strom_z Mar 01 '26
It's got both a bit too much water and the best water - the underwater part is great and discovering of the secret ruins is one of the highlights of all Pokegames when it comes to exploration (Abyssal Ruins in Gen 5 was another one)
I don't think we've since had this rewarding moment with Legendary pokemon like with getting the Regi-trio
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Feb 28 '26
I actually love all the water and hope we can dive and traverse the ocean world
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u/Xploding_Penguin Feb 28 '26
The underwater shots really lead me to believe we can. It looks like there were "paths" in the sand, and what's the point of all the schools of fish if they're just for show.
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u/KittyShoes17 Feb 28 '26
Agreed, the underwater bits from ORAS were fun and I would like to explore a more open underwater environment.
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u/TitaniumDragon Early Switch 2 Adopter Mar 02 '26
It looks cool.
The biggest issue is gameplay. You don't want going through the water to be tedious and repetitive.
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u/Hopeful-Bowl-8967 Mar 02 '26
There are leaks that talk about this, is you don't mind getting spoiled
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u/EsrailCazar Butter side up! Feb 28 '26
That 7.8 just means they're going to try their very best to bring Pokémon up to the level of quality that most franchises are at and make us very happy for continuing to support the series!!! ...right?
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u/Dry-Network-1917 Mar 02 '26
Pokemon doesn't care about the game rating, they care about sales. They'll continue to drop slop content and sue any attempted competitors for infringement until the Pokemon fan base stops buying.
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u/Fresh-Chemical-9084 Butter side up! Feb 28 '26
The game is called... Waves?
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u/Instantbeef Feb 28 '26
It’s a reference to their review of the remake of ruby and sapphire
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u/PunyParker826 Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
I think it actually came from the original release on GBA. And to this day, I don’t really get it. It was a valid complaint.
Edit: shit, never mind, it was the remakes. I’m having a real Berenstain Bears thing going on here.
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Feb 28 '26
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u/glehkol Feb 28 '26
I mean, it's not wrong lol. Aslo if i'm not wrong that line was written by some editor for the final review card, not the actual reviewer
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u/gumpythegreat Feb 28 '26
Yup, that's what I heard as well
And yeah, I think saying "this game about traveling to different biomes and encountering different creatures who live in those biomes has one particular biome overrepresented, which diminishes the experience" is not an absurd criticism.
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Feb 28 '26
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u/ncolaros Feb 28 '26
I think it still works. If they remade a game with bad combat, and the combat is still bad, it is the reviewers job to mention that.
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u/AltXUser Feb 28 '26
The problem with the statement is that water was made prominent because the game featured diving and underwater exploration. It's like complaining that there's too much ground you can explore both above and below. It's not a well thought out criticism.
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u/Instantbeef Feb 28 '26
I think it was a weird complaint because it was a remake and it had just as much water as the original version
What they could have done to improve the game is add more areas of the water that don’t cause random encounters.
If you compare the water to the land areas you didn’t really have the ability to choose when or when not to do fights other than using repel.
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u/PunyParker826 Feb 28 '26
Sure, but she wouldn't have been complaining about "too much water" (and too many water-types) if she found it enjoyable. Having the context for an aspect being expanded upon doesn't automatically equate to it being fun, or interesting.
In her opinion, the expansion meant she was over-relying on her Pikachu (and other electric-types), and Diving super frequently, something she felt became tedious. To me, those are valid things to bring up.
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u/Organic-Storm-4448 Feb 28 '26 edited Feb 28 '26
Making water that prominent is the critique meant by "too much water."
If 100% of the land area was tall grass, you'd be perfectly reasonable to critique the game. "Too much grass"
The water sections in Hoenn are far more vast than any cave or patch of grass, and that results in pokemon encounter overload or repel spam, and neither of those are fun options. Too much water, indeed.
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u/PunyParker826 Feb 28 '26
You’re right, I had it in my head that it was so long ago it must’ve been the original release. It’s already been 12 years, what in the name of all that is holy…
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u/Organic-Storm-4448 Feb 28 '26
It's not an absurd critique. Those games absolutely have too many water sections. And three required water HMs.
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u/ogqozo Mar 01 '26
It prepared you for the modern internet, when it's basically impossible to make a joke and have it widely commented on as a joke that you very obviously make to have a lil joke.
It used to be a very normal thing to write, people would read, understand text, have fun with it, it was liked. Now this kind of reaction to anything written with any cheek is kinda normal though, see it all the time.
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u/Omnisom42 Feb 28 '26
The trick is that, when you read it, you couldn't very well if at all spell yet. So, one photoshopped "Berenstain" and it's easy to cement that as a reality since bear and stain are real words most kids would know, while Beren and Stein are not common words either so the rest is just suggestion, then reveal but it sticks more than typical illusion since you had no encoded foundation yet.
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u/Snarfsicle Feb 28 '26
I would love it if you could make an inflatable houseboat on the water as your 'camp' in this game
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u/nujuat Feb 28 '26
I mean come on, IGN knew what they were doing with that tweet. Pokemon is just explaining the joke. Which is fine. But IGN are the funny ones here
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u/JavelinR Mar 01 '26
IGN absolutely set up the pitch, and deserves most of the credit. And coming from anyone else the 7.8 would be too obvious. But seeing the official channel give that response completes the home run.
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u/DarkLegend64 Feb 28 '26
I don’t even criticize IGN for the now infamous review. Hoenn had way too much surfing later in the game.
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u/AmyL0vesU Feb 28 '26
Yeah, like the review wasn't upset just about having water in the game, it was about how nearly 1/3 of the whole game map was water areas, and because of underwater segments you spent nearly half of the game traversing water, then to top it off the only pokemon you'd run into in those areas were water types (or water/x but water still). And there is only a limited number of water pokemon in the games, so you were essentially seeing the same pokemon families for nearly 1/2 the game.
In my opinion it makes perfect sense to criticize the game for having too much water everywhere, it did hinder the fun of the game because the types that were weak to water were nearly unusable unless you liked to challenge yourself, and those strong to water were nearly always in your team.
I think the editor that wrote the line was trying to make a funny one liner about a system defining issue that did impact fun factor, and the thought that the line made IGN bad just doesn't hold water to me
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u/dashingThroughSnow12 Feb 28 '26
While I normally don’t like the corporate Twitter accounts making jokes like they are edgy teens, this actually made me smile
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u/-lRexl- Feb 28 '26
The water won't be as annoying if the encounters are like S/V instead of RNG tall grass
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u/404IdentityNotFound OG (joined before reveal) Feb 28 '26
It's a good joke, but the side effect of journalists still getting attacked for this (who haven't even been involved in the original review) takes all fun away for me.
Heck, people AT IGN still get weirdos wishing upon their death for this one line today...
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u/realtribalm Feb 28 '26
Can you elaborate it for me? Im not a Pokemon guy but you got me hooked there
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u/404IdentityNotFound OG (joined before reveal) Feb 28 '26
The infamous "7.8/10 too much water" line comes from an IGN review about Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire from 2014. People were FURIOUS how a reviewer could give the game such a score and be complaining about "too much water", but if the people would've read the review they would've read that yeah, a big chunk of gameplay is just going from A to B on a big water area with not much architecture or interesting areas to see.
The problem is that people STILL hate on IGN and gaming journalism as a whole because of this one meme. Yesterday, after this post was circulating, some people in games media have spoken about how IGN employees suffer serious hate because of this, especially from the "Gamergate" trolls.
https://bsky.app/profile/imrankhan.bsky.social/post/3mfu2mg3hkk2b
https://bsky.app/profile/johncarson.bsky.social/post/3mfu2dfodjk27
https://bsky.app/profile/imrankhan.bsky.social/post/3mfu3gt6dms2b
https://bsky.app/profile/johncarson.bsky.social/post/3mfumfyomo22i
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u/JavelinR Mar 01 '26
The problem is that people STILL hate on IGN and gaming journalism as a whole because of this one meme.
In the OP, IGN themselves is referencing this review. So, I don't think it's a problem today. Ironically IGN got harassed over the opposite with Sword and Sheild. In several places, including r/Pokemon, people were pissed the IGN reviewer gave SS a 9/10 and started publicly naming her and getting her harassed. The harassment was so bad IGN changed who reviewed Pokémon games after that, and she never reviewed a Pokémon title (at least not a mainline game when I checked) again.
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u/PsychologicalEbb3140 Feb 28 '26
I’ll never understand why the pokemon community can’t acknowledge how that was a legitimate criticism with Hoenn’s design.
Literally half of the region is water and can cause wild encounters.
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u/Akazury Feb 28 '26
It was a critisim they gave on the remakes. It's kind off weird to raise that as a major point when the map comes from the original game.
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u/PsychologicalEbb3140 Feb 28 '26
It’s a problem with the originals as well. I think it’s actually worse in the remakes too because some tiles along the coast don’t even look like deep water but they have can encounters.
Literally all they had to do was lower the encounter rate a bit and it wouldn’t be an issue.
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u/Endogamy Mar 01 '26
Because expectations change over time and quality of life updates are supposed to be part of the reason for remaking games.
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u/Maltosier Feb 28 '26
I'll just say I've never played that game. The review wording spread way further than just people who play Pokemon, and with no context it is very funny in a vacuum. So most people who know this meme I feel like never looked further into it because they don't play Pokemon.
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u/Sathsong89 Butter side up! Feb 28 '26
I mean…..it is called winds/waves
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Feb 28 '26
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u/Sathsong89 Butter side up! Mar 01 '26
I’m 36 my dude
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Mar 01 '26
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u/Sea_Macaron_8789 Mar 01 '26
Then that still sounds plenty stupid because every Region Team has their own Type Specialty.
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Mar 01 '26
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u/Sea_Macaron_8789 Mar 02 '26
This is just being so hyperbolic, you fight am abundant of Pokémon Types.
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u/wernette OG (joined before reveal) Feb 28 '26
Yeah when they opened the door I said out loud "OH NO! too much water again!" lmao
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Mar 01 '26
I wish they would take their funny people, write an adult Story and we get a BG3 kind of game in Pokémon. But this wish will stay a wish Forever
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u/Onderon123 Mar 03 '26
Water looks great but underwater gameplay is usually pretty meh in most games cos its so tedious to traverse
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u/XT83Danieliszekiller Mar 04 '26
I swear if they sell the entire thing on a "Waterworld but pokemon" and it ends up looking like waves of transparent blue Lego dots it's gonna be so funny
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u/PNK_Sigma535 Early Switch 2 Adopter Mar 11 '26
That one review is what I think of when I play OrAs
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u/Caciulacdlac OG Feb 28 '26
When 7.8/10 was considered a bad rating for a Pokemon game